Rhea Seehorn Breaks Down Carol’s Existential Loneliness as the Last Woman in Albuquerque in Episode 7 of ‘Pluribus’
The loneliness has caught up with Carol Sturka. Vince Gilligan’s newest television entry, Pluribus, has been building an existential loneliness within its lead since The Joining. After the entire world Joined together, Carol – played by Rhea Seehorn (Better Call Saul) – has been attempting to figure out how to retain sanity, but the Joined left after her consistent ability to cause them mental strife. By the end of the seventh episode, “The Gap,” it’s been over a month since Carol’s seen or spoken to anyone, including Zosia, who was her main point of contact while talking to Them. Everything she’s needed has been spoken into a voicemail the Joined created to keep a safe distance from her while providing her with anything she requires. She’s become despondent, a stray firework she’s procured missing her face by inches without her moving a muscle. The lack of people is constricting her until she makes a desperate play in an attempt for their immediate return: she uses white paint and writes out “come back” in her cul-de-sac.
Zosia returns and Carol collapses into her arms, the weight of her loneliness crushing her. She’s become more miserable than ever before without the physical presence of another to console her.
I spoke to Rhea Seehorn about tonight’s episode, the relief of being able to discuss the series, the possibility of her directing again, and what Carol might do if given the opportunity to do a Masterclass.
Tyler Doster: How relieved are you to finally be able to discuss this show at length now that the show’s been on for a little bit?
Rhea Seehorn: Very relieved. Everything from having to keep secrets, to some of the very large philosophical questions it brings up. I’ve been discussing them within the bubble of my crew and cast, which has been fun, but I’ve been very curious what other people will think for a while, so that’s been very gratifying.
TD: What were you most curious about when audiences finally got to see it?
RS: Well, a number of things. I mean, I’d be lying if I didn’t say the first of which is this show is the kind of show that I would love, and Vince is a brilliant writer, but it’s very unique. It’s very strange. It’s very hard to define. And I wondered, will people think it’s funny when it’s funny and allow that humor into it, and then also take the deep dives with us psychologically to explore some of these really large philosophical questions while living in this plot that’s driven by this sci-fi insane event and has a mystery as well?
And, so, relief was actually the first thing I was hoping for. And I’m not reading the reviews, but I’ve been told, and it’s been intimated to me, that it’s been received really well, so I’m glad.
TD: You said once during Better Call Saul that then Vince would give you information kind of organically as the seasons passed about Kim. For Pluribus, how was he giving you information? Was it more upfront or was he keeping Carol’s cards close to his chest?
RS: I think that with Kim Wexler, he and Peter Gould were not sure how long I’d be around. They really left it very open about what the story was going to be and how it would grow or not grow. And then additionally, larger scope, they do have a structure in mind when they’re breaking down stories in the writer’s room, but they don’t have a Bible that they have to stick to that exactly this thing will happen by this episode. The difference on this show is because he was writing the show for me, and I knew I would be the lead, and I’m the protagonist, he had more of an idea of how I will take the audience through this world and what the arc of that journey would be. But I didn’t ask and he didn’t say anything. I got my scripts one at a time other than the first three, but that was because of the strikes.
But my RAM space was pretty full with just playing and navigating what was there episode to episode. Whether or not Vince was discovering anything story-wise along the way, I couldn’t say. We were definitely discovering tone and character together though, because we were making a new character whole cloth, and we didn’t know everything about her. And I didn’t want to cement every single thing about her before I even started, so we explored that together.
TD: So it had a little bit of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about what was coming?
RS: Also, “Let’s find it.”
TD: Is it more of a freeing experience to have so many scenes where you’re by yourself and without a scene partner? Did it allow you to take more risks?
RS: No, I wouldn’t say that. I mean, it’s definitely that they each have their own kind of challenges acting with other scene partners and acting alone. Although frequently, your scene partner, when you’re acting alone, is the audience. I am their access point to taking them through beats of a story that need to be told as much as any scene full of dialogue, you know? I still have to take them on this journey, and I’m still plotting out what I was thinking. Whether I’m in a scene with a person or not, and I’m not speaking, that’s another time when I’m still like, “The thought process is still there. It’s just the choice to not speak.”
And so when she’s alone, Vince chose to go the very, I think, authentic route of not having me just constantly talk to myself for no reason. But it meant that you have to trust your audience, and he does that so well. He trusts the intelligence of the audience, which is a gift, I think, to fans, as well as to me as a performer, because I don’t have to telegraph it. They are following a story, things are open to interpretation, and you have to accept when some things are just experiential. But, no. I don’t take more risks. I take risks by doing all of my homework in a scene with somebody, and then going there and allowing them to throw me a curveball and realizing I can’t at all do this scene the way I had thought I was going to do it, because to be present and to react to what they’re doing is now affecting how I was going to say my next line. And that’s magic. That’s joy.
So, yeah. I take just as many risks. It’s more that my collaboration gets more dense as far as the back-and-forth with my director when it’s just me alone, because it’s the two of us calibrating, “How’s the tone shift happening here? Are we getting what we need story-wise from this? ” And/or a dance with my DP and my awesome camera ops.
TD: It’s her sole point of communication with them becomes the voicemails that she’s leaving for them. How did you work to convey this sense of loneliness that’s starting to come over her episode by episode, and it finally kind of crashes on her in episode seven?
RS: Scripts are written so beautifully and so solidly that it’s on the page. Just even the narrative descriptions that he gives of the solitude that she’s facing. And then they help me. Vince would help remind me that it’s been 30 days, not four days. Because I just shot the last episode with people there four days ago, and he’s like, “Yes, but we’re speeding up the time now,” which you see in the clock and everything. And so he would remind me of things like that. But for me, it felt a little bit like receding because I kept trying to think of things in my own life where I go from, because I have an extrovert part of me and absolutely half introvert, and when they’re out of balance, the other one will suffer. I’ll feel very out of whack. But there is a difference in my life between, “I need some alone time right now,” and then being lonely.
And so what happens when that crossover happens? What does it feel like? Not just what does it feel like, but what does it look like, or other people I know that have gone through that, and trying to draw on what illustrations that help tell that story? And some of it is body language, some of it is sort of, I think of it as kind of receding. You stop going towards things that interest you, and you start retreating from them because they just don’t have any effect anymore, whether that’s just taking a walk outside, or she’s even watching her favorite show passively now. It’s not sitting up and watching it. And just that feeling when time has started to just slowly inch along and look for purpose.
Another thing is when she has any nugget, no matter how tired after building all the pavestones for the grave, seeing that barcode on the bag is enough to get her up, even though she is exhausted and burdened with all this grief because she desperately wants something to do. To sit there silently in her own thoughts and feelings is just fresh hell.
TD: There’s these little pieces of light in the darkness for her, and there’s a lot of darkness for her across the season. Those final moments of episode seven when Zosia does come back, was that always going to be a wordless interaction? And was that cathartic as a performer to get to be in that space again with someone else?
RS: It was always wordless. And Adam Bernstein directed that one, and we worked a lot on how, and Vince Gilligan there as the showrunner as well, we did a lot of takes of a range of how much Carol lets go.
And it was much more contained in the first couple of takes of it, because I remember wanting to play with, or at least try out in a couple of takes, she’s been so loathed to show them any crack in the armor and even the tiniest bit of vulnerability, that I thought to show anything was big. But there again was when Adam and Vince were reminding me, she’s been in a type of isolation. Yes. She could still eat and move around her house and watch TV, but it was an existential isolation where you have no idea if this will ever end, and that it broke her. It really broke her.
And we needed that to be present in the scene prior to that moment with the fireworks, and therefore the bookend to that had to be a release that would be embarrassing for the old Carol, but that’s how broken she is. The fact that she can’t even pretend that she is still not relieved and falling apart.
TD: You directed an episode of Better Call Saul when you were on that show. Do you have any director aspirations for this show?
RS: Maybe one day. I would like to direct again, and directing with this kind of, and by this kind of material, I mean the caliber of writing that Vince and the writer’s room do. But also, the support of this crew and these department heads, there’s nothing like it. However, I definitely couldn’t have done it this season, and I don’t know what the second season is, but yeah, no. I was barely, as my dad used to say, walking, talking and chewing gum and keeping up with it.
Yeah. I don’t know. It would take a lot to be able to do it just to give it the due it deserves. I wouldn’t want to half-ass either the performance or the directing.
TD: You also, for Better Call Saul, you did an ethics lesson with Kim Wexler. And I was wondering what you thought, if Carol Sturka was to do a masterclass or any kind of lesson, what would she be doing?
RS: Well, I guess pre this event, she’d probably do a writer’s masterclass, right? Romance novel writing. Post, I think it would be pretty, I was just getting ready to say maybe speech oration, just because Carol – I find very humorously – is trying to sound leadership-sounding in this call to arms. And she’s a writer, so she’s able to write them well, but she knows she’s using very hyperbolic language when it’s like, “We’ve got to save the human race!” And she’s aware that she looks like a mess.
But I think it would be pretty funny if she thought, “Okay. I’m going to teach everybody to do speeches.” Obviously, she’s trying to get everybody to fight back, but yeah. Maybe she’d come up with some class that’s actually a roundabout, like a backdoor way to get people to fight something. I don’t know. A board game? Something.
TD: What are you allowed to tease about the rest of the season?
RS: Virtually nothing. I can tell you that just like all of the episodes, as I got the scripts one at a time, I was constantly amazed, but never in a shock value way. It was never like, “Oh, okay. You’re just going to jump the shark to jump the shark,” or whatever.
It was always another interesting twist to all of it, both the mystery, the plot, the ticking clock of her survival as she knows it, and these larger philosophical questions. Just bringing in more and more salient points of, “Yeah, but what if this? Would you still be that way if this happened or that happened?”
And a new version of redefining something. I’m like, “What am I allowed to say?” Do you know those questions that keep coming up of, “how do you define happiness?” How do you define contentment, joy, all of that? We’d have to talk after it comes out. I found that there was a new version of that question.
Episode 7, “The Gap,” premiered tonight. Two episodes remain, with the season one finale airing December 26.
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